D&D General Kara Tur 5e

[Voadam]

3pp Kara-Tur products on the DMsguild.

Here is a starter search for such products, just ignore the WotC/TSR stuff

 

[jian]

My wishlist: Return to the spirit of the 1985 book.

1) Focus on Japan, not all of Asia. Most of the original OA was on Japanese themes. All the original play testers were Japanese. Double down on this. And other countries later if the demand is there.

2) Folklore themed. One of the best things about OA was the folklore theme in the adventures, including those in Dungeon. Go back to this - not D&D retreading itself endlessly, but fantasy focused on folklore elements like ghosts and spirits - not Beholders & Builds.

3) It’s own stand-alone setting, not (necessarily) Forgotten Realms. OA was originally its own place, vaguely hinted in previews to be in Greyhawk. It doesn’t need to be a side piece to another setting.

4) NEW: Tie in to “Shogun”. The current streaming series is great, so be more clear you can do that in OA.

5) NEW: Obviously, OA is no longer an acceptable name, due to a shift in the language. Kara-Tur is not great either though - tied to a legacy of too many underdeveloped takes on real world places (was “Koryo” ever in a module? Why do we need it anymore than we need a specific Portugal analog in Faerun?) and basically a failure within FR. Come up with a new name. “Swords of the Shogun” (a play on OA1 “Swords of the Daimyo”), “Ninjas & Samurai”, something new that says what it is?

There was quite a lot of Kara Tur that wasn’t Japanese in OA - sure, quite a few of the classes were Japan-specific (ninja, yakuza, sohei etc) but there was a lot of material that was Chinese, and of course there’s all the Mongol invasion stuff to overlap with other FR supplements.

You could produce a Japan-only supplement (call it Kozakura, Land of the Sun if you like) but honestly they already did that in OA 3.5 with the L5R crossover, and the ninja craze of the 80s is many decades behind us.

 

[occam]

In the past decade or so Chinese language fantasy fiction has really taken off, and now there really is no reason for a western creator to be ignorant of them. So many of the character options in OA were based on Japanese archetypes: here are some distinctly fantastic but uniquely Chinese ideas I'd like to see alongside samurai ninjas and shugenjas

I would like:

Some sort of class or subclass that is explicitly called a "fangshi" - a "master of recipes", referring to Chinese alchemy, though this is also a better translation of a d&d style wizard with their spell books and such

In D&D terms, that is what the wu jen was. In the Kara-Tur boxed set, it even notes that they're called fang-hsiang shih ("master of recipes") in Shou Lung. It's possible that Zeb Cook wasn't familiar with the term when Oriental Adventures was published, or he might've used that instead of coining(?) a Chinese translation of "magic-user". Or maybe he thought the pronunciation would be challenging for English readers, but then he gave us a term that is consistently mispronounced as "woo dzhenn".

In any case, if you want something with the fangshi label on it, there is a wizard subclass by the name in Heroes of WakeSong.

 

[occam]

Hopping vampires and ghosts. I'd actually like to see more ghosts in D&D period. A horribly underutilized foe in D&D.

See Van Richten's Guide for a 5e version of the jiangshi (hopping vampire).

 

[Shades of Eternity]

Ok

What media should you draw on for.kara-tur?

 

[Henadic Theologian]

My wishlist: Return to the spirit of the 1985 book.

1) Focus on Japan, not all of Asia. Most of the original OA was on Japanese themes. All the original play testers were Japanese. Double down on this. And other countries later if the demand is there.

2) Folklore themed. One of the best things about OA was the folklore theme in the adventures, including those in Dungeon. Go back to this - not D&D retreading itself endlessly, but fantasy focused on folklore elements like ghosts and spirits - not Beholders & Builds.

3) It’s own stand-alone setting, not (necessarily) Forgotten Realms. OA was originally its own place, vaguely hinted in previews to be in Greyhawk. It doesn’t need to be a side piece to another setting.

4) NEW: Tie in to “Shogun”. The current streaming series is great, so be more clear you can do that in OA.

5) NEW: Obviously, OA is no longer an acceptable name, due to a shift in the language. Kara-Tur is not great either though - tied to a legacy of too many underdeveloped takes on real world places (was “Koryo” ever in a module? Why do we need it anymore than we need a specific Portugal analog in Faerun?) and basically a failure within FR. Come up with a new name. “Swords of the Shogun” (a play on OA1 “Swords of the Daimyo”), “Ninjas & Samurai”, something new that says what it is?

The question was about Kara Tur, not should we do a completely new and unrelated OA focused just on fantasy Japan, THEY DID THAT ALEADY IN 3E, it didn't work out and they dumped that setting.

 

[jian]

Ok

What media should you draw on for.kara-tur?

Well, there’s a lot there. The original drew on 70s/80s martial arts films mostly (Japanese/US ninja films and Shaw Brothers kung fu) and of course the state of the medium has moved on. Here are some media which are both authentic and well known:

- Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon (2000): Not really very recent but the best and most famous distillation of the wuxia genre for this century.

- Shogun (2024): As mentioned above, for Sengoku Japan.

- Alchemy of Souls (2022): Probably the best known Korean medieval fantasy series, comes with lots of worldbuilding and Korean fantasy tropes, available on Netflix. Basing Koryo on this series would be absolutely fine by me.

- The Untamed (2019): A relatively well known Netflix xianxia drama, with the bonus of being very gay (danmei). There are loads of these, though.

- The Apothecary Diaries (2023): A Japanese anime series set in a mixed (mostly Ming Chinese but also quite Japanese and Korean) East Asian medieval setting, also on Netflix.

 

[Dragonhelm]

This is a random wish list of things.

• Vanara species
• Subclasses for the samurai fighter, ninja rogue, and some sort of wu jen or shugenja.
• A setting that is NOT fantasy versions of real-world east Asian nations. Looking at you, Koryo!
• A setting that takes a lot of inspiration from anime and wuxia films.
• The fire shuriken spell.

All I can think of at the moment. Happy gaming!

 

[Micah Sweet]

There was quite a lot of Kara Tur that wasn’t Japanese in OA - sure, quite a few of the classes were Japan-specific (ninja, yakuza, sohei etc) but there was a lot of material that was Chinese, and of course there’s all the Mongol invasion stuff to overlap with other FR supplements.

You could produce a Japan-only supplement (call it Kozakura, Land of the Sun if you like) but honestly they already did that in OA 3.5 with the L5R crossover, and the ninja craze of the 80s is many decades behind us.

I thought this thread was about what you wanted them to make, not what is currently popular (or not).

 

[Micah Sweet]

The question was about Kara Tur, not should we do a completely new and unrelated OA focused just on fantasy Japan, THEY DID THAT ALEADY IN 3E, it didn't work out and they dumped that setting.

So what? This is about what you want from them, not what is or isn't popular.